The ideal community contingency preparation for y2k is to make neighborhoods
as self-sustainable as possible. On the face of it this seems too daunting to
be possible, but I created a non-commercial website that focuses on
developing an ever-improving list of low-tech sustainable ideas/methods to
make it as easy as possible for individuals and groups to implement these
ideas to become models for their neighbors and others over the internet and
thru the media.
I have been deeply involved for about a year and a half and have had nothing
but trouble in getting this website off the ground. Many of the ideas can be
implemented very quickly, others take some time. Its still not entirely too
late. I am involved, among other things with the President's y2k commission,
which has a teleconference with about 40 other y2k "experts" bi-monthly.
Tomorrow(Nov.18), we will have Helen Caldicott and someone from the Nuclear
Reg. Comm debating the nuclear issues related to y2k and open to our
questions and comments. I say this, in a way, to help you understand, that I
am way up on y2k, I am well informed from having studying it an inordinate,
almost embarrassing amount of time, over the internet.
Everything that the website (http://bagelhole.org) wouldn't hurt to have even
if y2k ended up being way overblown (which is very unlikely, I should think).
I could easily imagine that the effects of y2k will be going on sporadically
for some time (at least a year), with the possibility of things getting
slowly overwhelming to the point of infrastructure seizure. In a way this
could be good, in that it would give us extra time to prepare properly and
fully. And I reiterate that that has to do with becoming as self-sustainable
as possible asap. This is not necessarily long term self-sustainability, I'm
talking about, though that would be good, i.e. bioremedialization,
elimination of toxics, and pollutants, renewable energy, restructuring
society (co-operative vs competitive). It is instead "relative low-tech
self-sustainability"; growing your own food (vertical gardening for those
without yards, aquaponics - on schools, backyards, empty lots, greenhouses,
gardens, window sills, insects, bees, animals like rabbits and chickens,
water catchment - relatively easy, since we all have gutters and downspouts
which could be retrofitted for purification, passive solar water heating,
toilet retrofitting for compost and worm production, energy conservation
within the home, and more.
This needs to become a trend, through the internet, media, and local example,
globally. This way, we prepare intelligently and prudently for possible
disaster(s), escape the dominance of corporate entities, and lay the
groundwork for a future world based on decentralized, non-sovereign, mutually
co-operative, relatively self-sustainable small communities. The opposite of
the dysfunctional, violent, death march we have to endure today.
There is a lesson in y2k which few have learned yet, it seems to me, and that
is while high tech is undeniably great, it places humanity in an
unnecessarily risky situation due to its complexity, universality, and
interconnectedness, wherein the possibility of kaleidoscopic collapses could
occur globally (this is new, historically). That is why low-tech needs to be
brought back and reimplemented as quickly and widely as possible. Within one
or two generations, much of this has been lost. Imagine, if you would, if we
had already done it. Food wouldn't be reliant on trucks (as almost all
commercial items are), which is reliant on oil, electricity, computers,
communications, everything, as well as most everything else, water, sewage,
health/medical, etc. We wouldn't have to worry so much if everything we
really needed was right here in the community within walking distance. We
could have high tech without the grave risks that are inherent within. Think
about it.
Tom Osher
San Francisco
451-824-4214
Mr. Osher has been an intense and consistant activist with Food Not Bombs
from 1988 to 1995, a creative movement teacher in the private schools of SF,
started the first "antique clothing store" in the Western Hemisphere in
1969-72 in N. Beach. Initiated the used jeans business back then, raised
children, taught designs on clay platters at Precita Eyes Mural Arts Center,
currently has a hauling business and is attempting to make his home in
Hunters Pt. a model for low-tech sustainability with an aquaponics
(greenhouses synergistic with a fishfarm underneath) system developing in his
backyard.
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